Accounting directly in the bank: how to make PI happy

    Away from accounting concerns - this is exactly the dream of any individual entrepreneur using a simplified tax regime. Combining Internet banking and accounting in one service becomes one of the most important tasks of each bank. What path of development in this direction our team has chosen, what pain points have been discovered and how we are going to solve them - we reveal our cards.



    A significant proportion of small businesses in Russia are individual entrepreneurs at the simplified tax system of 6% without employees. But entrepreneurs are not too willing to use banking services. To help these people to automate the processes associated with accounting, reporting and documents as painlessly as possible, we have created and are developing the project “My Accounting 1C”. Visually, this is a separate tab on the “My Business” Internet Bank page, which we gradually fill with new and new useful functionality. At the moment, the service allows you to calculate and pay all taxes and payments of individual entrepreneurs. Over the past two months, several hundred clients have connected to the service. In the best traditions of UX-practice, we actively phoned customers, met with them and collected feedback. As a result, there was an understanding of where to develop further.

    First, how it works now. In order to become a user of the My Accounting 1C service, in the My Business Internet Bank, the client needs to go to the My Accounting 1C tab and click the Connect button. All that is needed from the PI is to specify the e-mail address where the notification of the successful registration in the service will come. For each client, an instance of the application “1C: BusinessStart” is created and launched. This application is tied to an online banking account.

    After successful connection to the service, an extract is issued for the last 2 years of the company's activity, and a taxable base is reconstructed on its basis.



    Under each client, a separate full-fledged application “1C: BusinessStart” is launched and tied to the My Business Internet Bank. In Appendix 1C, the statement is processed and a tax event is created for the client. In fact, this is an analogue of a reminder, but in a more extended format. The tax event contains information about when and how to pay the tax and submit reports, as well as how this tax is calculated. When a client works in the Internet bank, he sees reminders that are generated based on the data downloaded from the 1C application. The display of these reminders can be postponed, and then they will reappear only a week before the end of the tax event. Banners are small, will not distract from the current tasks. But at the same time they are noticeable, it is quite difficult to miss them.



    Feedback from the first users of the service allowed us to make a map of the further development of “My Accounting 1C”. Among the main areas: reporting, transparent accounting, document flow, cash and recovery of accounting.

    Accounting Methodology: Education Required


    For entrepreneurs using the simplified tax system of 6%, only 13 tax events are created per year. This amount of events can be kept in mind. Clients, as a rule, do not remember taxes exactly until the moment of their payment. And only then questions like “why so much?” Arise. Someone has already paid more in the previous tax period, someone has just recently registered and must pay less than the current amount. And calls to the hotline support.



    We review various options for how to properly build work with a client, how to explain to him before and when a tax event occurs, what and when to pay. To do this, prepare a large, detailed training manual - what, when and to whom you need to pay. For convenience, they placed in it mathematical formulas so that the client could check everything himself using a calculator. We will also work on a separate FAQ section that will help the client figure out what, when and why he needs to pay.

    Reporting: thanks, CEP!


    As we found out, customers do not perceive accounting separately from reporting, for them this is a one-stop service. In other words, the accounting department should itself generate all the required reports and declarations, send them to the regulatory authorities. Is it logical

    The generation of reports and declarations required by legislation is performed by Appendix 1C. But in order to be able to send them to the regulatory authorities, the client will need a certificate of a qualified electronic signature - CEP.

    Receiving it is not a trivial task, since the client needs to collect documents and fill out an application. When communicating with clients, we found out that on average it takes about 20 minutes to connect: you need to find your tax number, number in the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, SNILS, and type all this in the appropriate fields. There is something to think about and what to improve.



    For example, you can integrate with third-party services and pull up the necessary data automatically. On the basis of the information available to the bank, it is possible to realize the completion of most fields - the client will only have to verify the data. At the moment we are moving in this direction.

    Document flow: away from papers


    When communicating with clients, we found out that they sometimes require simple forms of documents, and customers would like to have guaranteed correct templates and fill them out directly in the Internet bank. Now we are actively working to ensure that customers have the opportunity. For the simplified taxation system of 6% and similar simple tax systems, we are working on a document designer. The basis was taken from a selection of several thousand sample forms that are in Appendix 1C. We select the most common forms and allow customers to fill them in our online bank.

    We already have a billing service, but, unfortunately, it is not yet integrated with the 1C-EDO service. The integration will allow customers using EDI of the Internet Bank to send documents signed by a qualified electronic signature directly to the 1C application in electronic form to their contractors.

    Now only a small part of our clients are connected to “1C-EDO” and use the possibilities of electronic document circulation, but we believe that the popularity of this service will grow. It is much more convenient and easier to do business by tying the creation of closing documents to the creation of payment orders. I made a payment - lead it through 1C-EDO so that your accounting department receives these documents and closes the transaction. According to the plans, the designer of the documents will appear in our online bank until the end of 2019.

    Ticket office: time to machine


    When communicating with clients, we found out that many of them work with cash registers and that they need the ability to “manually” enter data into online accounting. As part of our project, IEs will be able to work with cash registers, but, unfortunately, they will have to go directly to Appendix 1C. Most clients should have no difficulties, but, nevertheless, we have prepared first-line support staff - they will tell you where and when you need to click in order, for example, to add a Z-report to Appendix 1C.

    In fact, this is not difficult: choose a tax event, click on the “Edit in 1C” link, you fall into incomes and create cash flow in them. To do this, you need to interrupt the check number, check amount and name of the transaction The service will automatically recalculate the income, take into account that this income was through the cashier, and the client’s reports will be in order. Our future plans are to automate manual input.

    Accounting history recovery: a shadow of the past


    We thought that first of all our project will attract people who have just registered as an individual entrepreneur. But in reality everything turned out differently. The service began to be used by people who have long been engaged in business activities. And it’s not so easy to start reporting “not a clean slate”. There was a question of recovery of the reporting that the PI conducted for previous years.

    Here we plan to develop towards automatic acts of reconciliation. There are 5 documents that allow you to restore customer records in a specific format and get all the information that tax knows or wants to know about our client’s business. As a result, we will be able to submit declarations that the client has not submitted before, and correctly calculate the amount of penalties and fines in case of non-payment or partial payment of taxes.

    Now we are actively thinking about how to tie everything up in a single scenario: when a client only connects the accounting department, we immediately release the CEP and allow him to request a reconciliation statement and additional documents from the regulatory authorities. And, most importantly, having received a response from the regulatory authorities to create the necessary tax events for the client to close them.
    How will this work? When registering an IP in the service, we create an application 1C and send an extract from the client account there. But the statement may not close all tax events, as it contains only what was happening directly in our bank. If the client uses other current accounts in other banks, it will be necessary to pick up statements from there and download to us in Appendix 1C. Then we can understand what taxes he paid. Then the application "1C: BusinessStart" will create a task for the client to request a reconciliation act.

    The next step is to issue a certificate of qualified electronic signature. After the certificate is issued, we ask the client to sign all the documents to them. The client checks all requests sent to regulatory authorities, and clicks OK. After some time, the answer comes from the regulatory authorities, is processed in the "Accounting" and we can assume that now we have all the data to properly bill for payment and submit reports.

    The main thing is feedback


    When the development of the service comes from customer needs, the most important condition for the implementation of our plans is the availability of feedback. At the first stage, we interviewed about 100 people, received detailed answers from them, and as a result, we planned tasks for reconciliation acts and the document designer. Further more. We are looking for customers who want to participate in testing. If you are on the USN 6% - join!

    Write your questions and suggestions in the comments, we will be happy to read and draw conclusions.

    Sincerely yours, My Accountancy 1C team.

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